The Joys of Binge Reading

Kaira Rouda is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author who was a highly successful marketing entrepreneur before she took to writing suspenseful psychological thrillers which dig beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Kaira talks about her latest spine-tingling story, Somebody’s Home. Julie Jones has left her suffocating marriage. With her teenage daughter, Jess, she’s starting over. Their new house in Oceanside is the first step towards a new life. But in a heartbeat, everything can change…

We’ve got ten copies of my latest book just published, Dangerous Desires, Book #10 in the Of Gold and Blood old California mystery series, to give away to ten lucky readers. Enter the draw on the website or on our Binge Reading Facebook page. Offer closes March 28, 2022.

Dangerous Desires, Book #10 in Jenny Wheeler’s Of Gold & Blood mystery series ENTER DRAW FOR DANGEROUS DESIRES

Just a reminder, the show notes for this episode can be found on The Joys of Binge Reading website www.thejoysofbingereading.com And don’t forget, you can also get exclusive bonus content–like hearing Kaira’s answers to the Getting-to-Know-You Five Quickfire Questions–by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter. For the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month, you can enjoy exclusive bonus content and have the satisfaction of knowing you are helping to keep the show alive. Details at www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading

SUPPORT BINGE READING ON PATREON

Links for this episode:

Kaira’s Best-Selling Entrepreneurial book: https://www.amazon.com/Real-You-Incorporated-Essentials-Entrepreneurs-ebook/dp/B004I6DD7Y

Here, Home, Hope: https://kairarouda.com/here-home-hope

Somebody’s Home: https://kairarouda.com/somebodys-home/

The Favorite Daughter: https://kairarouda.com/the-favorite-daughter/

The Next Wife: https://kairarouda.com/the-next-wife/

Jane Porter, Romance novelist: https://janeporter.com/

In The Mirror: https://kairarouda.com/in-the-mirror/

Best Day Ever: https://kairarouda.com/best-day-ever/

Kaira’s contemporary romance: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24981728-the-billionaire-s-bid

And Indigo Island Series: series/135275-indigo-island

Stanley Steemer: www.stanleysteemer.com

Real Living and Warren Buffet sale: https://therealdeal.com/2018/05/08/warren-buffet-pays-130m-to-buy-brookfield-out-of-brokerage/

Susan Isaacs: https://www.susanisaacs.com/

Nancy Drew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew

Sue Grafton: https://www.suegrafton.com/

Shirley Jackson The Lottery: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6219656-the-lottery

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery

Where to find Kaira Rouda:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kairarouda/

Facebook: https://twitter.com/KairaRouda

Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/KairaRoudaBooks/

Website: https://kairarouda.com/

The Killer Author Blub on Facebook and YouTube: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=784340975878871

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions.

But now, here’s Kaira.

Introducing domestic thriller author Kaira Rouda

Jenny Wheeler: Hello Kaira, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Kaira Rouda – Best-selling thriller author

Kaira Rouda: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Jenny Wheeler: You are a USA Today, Amazon and international bestselling author. You’ve got eight novels to your credit, but before you started writing you had an amazing life. You are the mother of four children, and you had a highly successful career as an entrepreneur.

You wrote an advice book for women entrepreneurs. You would almost think that you had done it all before you even started writing. What made you feel as if there was something left for you to do?

Kaira Rouda: I love that question because I did have a pretty hefty career in marketing and business, but since third grade I knew I wanted to be a writer. That was my dream. I wanted to write a novel, and so even from third grade on that had been in the back of my mind. Then when I ended up writing, my first book was a non-fiction book, which was never in the plans at all.

When I wrote that book, I was kind of encapsulating everything I had learned from helping, mostly women, create personal brands and then use those brands to make a great business. One of the things I would tell people was, you need to live the life of your dreams. You only have one life, and if there’s something you’ve been dreaming about doing, don’t wait, even if it’s a side hustle. I realized when I was going around the country speaking to all these groups of women, that I still hadn’t done the one thing I’d always dreamed of doing.

8 Essentials For Women Entrepreneurs – Kaira Rouda

Jenny Wheeler: That book, in case anybody’s interested in looking it up, is called Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs. It is, as you say, focused on realizing your dreams. Your very first book, which was called Here, Home, Hope won awards, so you started off with a hiss and a roar–the Indie Excellence award for starters, and the Writer’s Digest award.

That theme very much reflected where you’d come from. It was about an achieving woman who examines her life at 39 and finds it wanting. The tagline on your website is “beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives”, and I think if you look through your work, you see that theme being repeated in different ways in your novels. Would it be fair to say they all echo that idea?

Kaira Rouda: Yes, I think you hit it right on the money. When you start writing as a novelist, back with Here, Home, Hope, for example, because I’d had that non-fiction book out in the world, people saw me as a person who would write something like a reference to that book in a fictional way.

That character Kelly popped into my head and she had a lot of things she wanted to change about her life. She keeps a list on post-it notes all the way through the story. Actually, back then my tagline was “sparkling with humor and heart”, because my women’s fiction tended to be a bit lighter and happier.

Beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives

Then I became progressively darker in my stories, but I’ve always been fascinated with what’s beneath the surface, the seemingly perfect lives. If you peel back the layers of what’s happening, that’s what my books are doing. They get progressively deeper beneath the surface.

Jenny Wheeler: Did that reflect you? Were you a person who left post-it notes everywhere?

Kaira Rouda: Oh, my gosh, yes. If you saw me, or even anybody in my family was up here, they would be laughing. Even my cleaning lady said to me today, I saw an advertisement for a note system that’s digital. You just write on it. I’m like, no, I cannot live without post-it notes. There’s no way. So, yes, I have post-it notes.

When my husband and I were dating, he was like; you are so messy. But I have piles and I know what’s in the piles and I know where to find the piles, and so I said, love me, love my piles. That’s how I am. And I’m still like that.

Jenny Wheeler: I think it’s true no matter how perfect life might seem. I had years in journalism and the thing that amazed me about the interviews I did in those years was that you could almost bet that every single woman, no matter how beautiful she might be–an international model–she would be able to tell you immediately what was wrong about her or what she didn’t do very well.

We can make up an identity for ourselves with social media

It’s something we all feel inside so you started off at a good place in the sense of women identifying. What was the attraction of that theme to you?

Kaira Rouda: I guess it’s the notion that we can all, especially with social media now, pretty much make up what our identity is. You can pretend your life into existence in some ways, and in many cases, it isn’t real. Then you can also start feeling bad about yourself by comparing yourself to people who are making a pretend existence.

All of that is in the zeitgeist, and then when you add a global pandemic to the angst and all of us being trapped in our houses not knowing what’s outside. Probably the environment itself is also adding to why I think it is important to examine beneath the surface, and also maybe why my stories are getting a little darker right now too.

Jenny Wheeler: Somebody’s Home is particularly the book we’re talking about because that’s the most recently published one, and several of the main characters in that story are leading lives that nowhere match up to their public persona. The perfect façade they present to the world is so not true of their lives.

Was there anything in particular that drew you to that story? You’ve got a politician and a church leader, both of whom are failing badly privately while they’re presenting this shiny front. Was there anything in particular that drew you to that story?

The Question: What if you didn’t have a safe home to go to?

Kaira Rouda: That story, Somebody’s Home, started in my mind with the character, Tom. I wrote it during the lockdown part of the pandemic. When my four kids came back home and we were all hunkered down, the notion came to me. What if you didn’t have a safe home to go to, and what if home wasn’t safe anymore?

Tom is a character who has always lived in the same home. He grew up in this home. He’s a 20-something guy now, but the only thing he really feels attached to is this home. He is living back in the carriage house when his parents need to move. They’ve sold it. The new owner said he could stay for the weekend to pack up, but then he had to go.

The notion of this man who hasn’t grown up, and he doesn’t feel love from anywhere, and he’s holding onto this sense of place – that’s where it started. If you looked at the house from the outside, you wouldn’t know that there’s a seething somebody in the carriage house.

Jenny Wheeler: I see that you have been very involved with charitable agencies, like helping with homelessness and things. When I was reading about Tom’s story, I felt you had a real empathy for how he was feeling. He feels as if his father sees him as a loser, and I guess his father really sees him as somebody who hasn’t made it up to his expectations.

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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Giving back always pays you back more than you expect

Do you think your charitable work helped you to become more empathetic to someone like Tom?

Kaira Rouda: Yes. I think giving back to your community, however you do it, makes everything better in your life. You always get back more than you put into it. Working with homeless people, and I do a lot of work at the food pantry now here too, makes you realize that people need help but also that they are helpable.

With this character, his first mother ran away from his father when he was six years old, and he watched her leave from the driveway. Everybody’s got something good about them. If you think about Tom, who when we meet him is a very despicable character from the outside and hard to love, I think it is important to see something good in everybody.

Of course, it’s hard to stick with the story all the way through if you absolutely despise him–although some people really absolutely despise Tom from the beginning and don’t give him any benefit of the doubt. But I think as an author, it’s important to see something good in all of your characters.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. He obviously is incredibly misguided in the way his thinking has evolved, but that isn’t so unusual in the world we’re living in with all the social media input. People seem to get some fairly screwy ideas and get really convinced about them.

A young man who became a target

Kaira Rouda: Yes, totally. He is very much a target of people who like to lure people like him into some kind of belief system or group. He is loosely sucked into a kind of paramilitary type situation. If you are lonely and you’re online, there are people who are going to take advantage of that.

Jenny Wheeler: It’s quite touching that his sense of identity, which is probably very fragile, becomes quite inflated by these guys telling him what a great guy he is. It’s something that becomes a bit of a lifeline for him.

Julie Jones, the main character, is leaving a suffocating marriage and starting over again. She has bought this new house, not at all aware of the situation she’s walking into. It is quite creepy, because she comes back to her new house and realizes that somebody is there and she does not know who he is or why he’s there. It’s quite creepy right from the beginning. You are very good at spinning the suspense side of it.

‘The perfect home, the perfect family, the perfect lie’ The Favourite Daughter – Kaira Rouda domestic thriller

Kaira Rouda: Thank you. Yes, she is trying to be a good person to do a nice thing by giving him two days to move out. It’s her chance at a fresh start and she’s so gung-ho, and her teenage daughter moving across town with her is convinced her mom is having a nervous breakdown. They can’t believe this is happening to her. She has already got an angst-y teenager, and then she realizes what she’s allowed to stay in the carriage house. Poor Julie.

Jenny Wheeler: You have had another bestseller, The Favorite Daughter, and it frames that idea in a slightly different way.

The tagline for that one is “the perfect home, the perfect family, the perfect lie”. We have referred to the aspect of social media and the power it’s got now. Our fascination with other people’s dirty linen–what does it say to us as people? Everything that’s been trawling out in the media about the Epstein case, for example, is really horrible and yet fascinating at the same time.

Kaira Rouda: As a society, I don’t know why, but we like to build people up. We love celebrity and then we love it when people fall too. Maybe it’s about making you feel better with your own life if you can pick on other people’s lives.

Hard to turn away from a monster like Jeffrey Epstein

Epstein is fascinating to me too in many ways. It is hard to turn away sometimes because you see that this monster, in that case Epstein, was living this huge life right in front of all of us and getting away with it. He is a fascinating case study.

But even if it’s just somebody that lives down the street from you in your suburb, and they have the best car and the hottest wife, whatever it is, they seem to have it all, and finding out that they were part of the college cheating scandal or something like that. That is fascinating to us because what we see is not at all what we’ve got.

Jenny Wheeler: Your books sound like they’d be perfect stories for this environment for TV or film, and I wonder if you’ve had any nibbles yet in that regard.

Kaira Rouda: I have had nibbles, but there are no fish on the line. Anybody who is interested, I think they would be great too, but I’m not in that world. I just have to sit back and hope someday somebody reads one and says, yeah, this is great.

Jenny Wheeler: Absolutely. I read somewhere that a meeting with romance novelist Jane Porter was what encouraged you to get started with the fiction side of things. Tell us about how that happened.

Writing romance proved to Kaira ‘I can’t write sex scenes’ Here, Home, Hope by Kaira Rouda

Kaira Rouda: I had written Here, Home, Hope and In The Mirror, and I had just moved out to California. I met Jane Porter at a mutual friend’s. She had a bunch of authors over to her house, and Jane said, have you ever tried writing romance? I said, no, never, not once. She said, do you want to? She had just started a new imprint called Tule Publishing, and she wanted to know if I wanted to write for her. I’m like, sure, I’ll give that a try. I wrote I guess one or two series of romance and what I found through that was really shocking to me, because I had never thought of it this way.

Romance is so empowering for women and all those women who write romance are fabulous. It led to me speaking at the Romance Writers Association in New York. I did a twist on my non-fiction book for women, but for writers, and I did a presentation about that for them, which was great.

I loved that, but I also found during my two years of romance that I can’t write sex scenes. I just can’t do it. I’m not good at it. I don’t want to write them. Even the leading up to it part, I am not good at. I decided, perhaps I should segue back into women’s fiction, which is what I was working on when suddenly the idea for Best Day Ever popped into my head. That, as we know, is not women’s fiction. It is my first dark scary book.

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Kaira Rouda – Domestic Thrillers